To change the background color of the Edit Box, instead of returning NULL for the function above, I returned a brush with the color I wanted for the background. Also, if you notice in the function above, one of the parameters is a pointer to the Device Context (pDC) of the control. I used the pDC->SetTextColor(COLORREF rgb) function to change the text color. I then ran into a slight problem. The background changed to the correct color and the text did as well, but the background of the text stayed white. This was a simple fix. I simply set the background color of the text using pDC->SetBkColor(COLORREF rgb) function. This is my modifed function:

As you can see, my control has three variables: COLORREF m_crText, COLORREF m_crBackGnd, and CBrush m_brBackGnd. I added two functions to my control, one to change the background color (and update the brush) and one to change the text color. Those two functions look like this:

The reason I have a COLORREF background variable is because I need a COLORREF to change the background color of the device context. A problem I ran into was that the entire edit control was not being colored right away; this is why I added the Invalidate(TRUE) call, to repaint the control.

That's all there was to it. By the way, my control doesn't set a background or text color by default. This can easily be done in the constructor.

Using the Code

Dialog Based:
Create a CEdit control. Control double-click it. The Add Member Variable dialog appears. Choose Control for the Category and CEdit for the Variable type. Set the variable name to something like m_wndEdit. When modifying the control, that remember m_wndEdit is the control, not a string containing the window text. To access the text, you will have to use the proper funtions for the control (such as CEdit::SetWindowText()).

Programmatically:
The simplest way I can think of to use this is just change all the CEdit controls you want to be read-only to CReadOnlyEdit.

Changing the colors:
To change the background and text color of the control, use the SetBack Color(COLORREF rgb) and SetTextColor(COLORREF rgb) functions. In the demo, I use a CColorDialog to get a color. The following is code from my demo. It is located in the Change Back Color button's click function:

Note: My control doesn't set the read-only flag; you have to do this yourself in the CReadOnlyEdit::Create function or in the dialog control properties. Also, this can be done with the CEdit::SetReadOnly(BOOL) function.

History

Jan 21 2005 - Update

Fixed Bugs

Added SetBackColor and SetTextColor functions

Jan 18 2005 - Posted

Basic bontrol, changed background color to white

About the Author

Kevin Bond

My name is Kevin Bond. I am 20 years old and I live in Kitchener, Ontario. I have been programming since I was 10 years old. I started with QBasic, then up to Visual Basic, and finally C++. I am an avid programmer of Windows as well. Besides that, I am also interested in automation, PLCs, and electronics. I will be attending Conestoga College in Sept. 2005 for their Mechanical Engineering: Automation and Robotics program. I hope to someday have a job where I can incorporate my skills with programming Windows with the skills I learn in that program.

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Comments

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Thanks!

Posted by Jonha
on 12/04/2006 01:54am

Thanks!
Yes,the solution can change the background color and test color, but that's a problem that if you don't call the SetBackColor() as first(at least once) then you can't set the text color by call SetTextColor(). There is a solution that you can call the two function while the control was be created. I put them in the PreSubclassWindow().

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